My cousin isn’t “special,” she’s just another woman who has sufficient intelligence to decide for herself what she is prepared to do with her own body. And if she’d chosen to abort that pregnancy for non-medical reasons, chances are she would’ve had a damn good reason to do so. But she doesn’t have to justify herself to me, anymore than she has to justify to me why she’s chosen to try and have a third child even though she’s been advised that from a medical POV, she’d be better off packing it in and enjoying the two healthy kids she already has.

If it were up to me, she or her husband would take permanent measures to ensure she couldn’t get pregnant again. Because that would make ME feel better, and I’d have one less thing to worry about. But it’s NOT up to me, and that’s a good thing, because she’s by far the best judge of what kind of risks she can handle. Life is a whole lot easier when you trust women to make their own decisions. And not just the ‘special’ women you know and care about, but all of them. Chances are every pregnant woman in the world is special to someone. And we should get the hell out of her way.

It’s a circular argument, but it’s handy if someone wants to maintain their ‘pro-life’ image while still giving a moral pass to their abortion or that of a loved one. And BTW, so-called pro-life women have abortions at the same rate as women who call themselves pro-choice. They’re just very quiet about it, because that particular abortion was different.

Which is, of course, horseshit, because abortion is birth control. It’s also taking responsibility for one’s actions. It is also being pro-life, as someone mentioned earlier. Just because you focus on a clump of cells and assign them greater rights than that fleshy object surrounding the womb does not mean you’re “pro-life” or anything you want to blindly label yourself as. Your type of policies obviously deeply affect the lives of women in negative and truly horrific ways. Non-assholes ususally recognize when their bullshit hurts other people, but as we’ve seen time and time again, “pro-life” and “asshole” are inextricably linked.

And the question is irrelevant. As far as I know, the US has *never* funded organisations which agitate for abortion rights in other countries. They have in the past funded organisations which provide birth control and education regarding reproductive issues, and acknowledge that illegal abortion exists (hard not to acknowledge it when so many women are dying of it), but not for a long time now. That whole global gag rule and abstinence-only thing has cut funding from a lot of organisations which neither offer abortions nor lobby politically for their legality.

I agree with Aram that it’s not “poverty or abortion;” we can and should talk about both. However, I also think the causal link Jill made was a little off. There is indeed a correlation; that is obvious. But if we made abortion legal in these countries tomorrow, I suspect that the maternal mortality rate wouldn’t change much.

Ok, one more time: I wasn’t arguing a causal link. I was pointing out a correlation. The post was about an article on illegal abortion, which is why I focused on that issue. Just because I write about one thing doesn’t mean that I don’t think other things are just as (or more) important.

The poverty issue is so blatantly obvious that I didn’t think it was necessary to mention it in a post where I was talking about a very narrow issue which is inherently tied to poverty. Especially to an audience like Feministe, where I assume that people know the most basic issues and fundamental facts — like the fact that a quick perusal of the maps shows that maternal mortality is highly correlated with poverty. Duh.

The extraordinary poverty there is almost certainly the main contributor to the lack of medical issues. but the gag rule certainly adds a lot to the chain. Women who are pregnant, or who are injured in an attempt to terminate a pregnancy, can’t easily escape poverty. It’s a fairly vicious circle.

And in that vein, I’ve certainly seen some pretty compelling arguments that the gag rule is larger in effect than it seems. The ability to control one’s procreation is almost a precondition to the ability to escape poverty.

I would love to share more about the Post-Abortion Care project. I have a meeting running through the afternoon, so if you have questions please post them so that I can have a starting point.